Friday, March 3, 2017

Kickstart the Week(end) with Dates! An Anthology of Queer Historical Fiction (Volume 2)

By: Nicole D’Andria

This week
I’m interviewing the co-editors ofDates Volume 2. This anthologyof
"queer historical fiction" focuses on happy endings rather than the tragic ones that often befall fictional characters in the LGBT+ community. The stories take place in a variety of time periods and settings.

The
anthology will center on the theme of progress and the individual stories
will be up to 16 pages long. There will be 218 pages of comics, 16 stunning
color illustrations, and 2 short prose stories; the final book will be over 260
pages. The target audience is ages 10 and up.

Some of the numerous stories include a trans woman in
19th century Bengal, a young woman trying to become a doctor in the
1920s Dominican Republic, and two innkeepers staying strong in Mesopotamia
during Hammurabi’s reign.

Artwork by Telênia Albuquerque

Contributors
include creators from the first Dates collection
as well as newcomers. These creative minds include Pat Shand (Destiny, NY, Robyn Hood, Iron Man: Mutually
Assured Destruction), Ayanna Johnson (From
Sweet Tea to BD), A
D’Amico
(Hidden Youth, Spitball 2), Telênia Albuquerque (Amazonmachy,
Princeless), Val Wise (Fat Mermaids Zine,
Tabula Idem) Fyodor Pavlov (Queerotica, The
Other Side) and Megan
McFerren
(Bespoke, Love of the Game), to name just a few. Each story even has its own cover.

The
project will only be funded if it hits its goal of $22,000 by March 25, 2017 at
3:00 PM EDT. Rewards include a digital ($10) or physical copy ($25) of Dates 2, bonus digital comics ($15+), a
2000-word historical fiction short about a topic of your choosing written by Gwen C. Katz
($100) and even more. You can check out their other rewards on their official
Kickstarter page.

I spoke
in-depth about the project with Dates two co-editors, Zora Gilbert and Cat Parra (Beyond 2):

Cat Parra (left) and Zora Gilbert (right)

Me: What inspired both of you to create this anthology, and the one before
it?

Zora: It was kind of a grand culmination of things.
The biggest and clearest was that in the spring of 2015, Cat was reading and
watching a lot of historical fiction (which means I was reading and watching a
lot of historical fiction), and we were both just really struck by the lack of
canonically-confirmed queer characters. We were also both well and painfully
aware of the tragic queer trope, and wanting more happy stuff to come back to instead
of the doom and gloom and stress that comes from consuming media that
might kill off the one character you most identified with. And honestly, we
were itching for a project, and after coming home from HeroesCon that year and
basking in all the awesome comics energy there, we just launched into it.

By Imas Esther

Me: The stories in this anthology avoid the tragic endings for characters in
the LGBT+ community that we often see in other works. Why do you think these
tropes exist? What are some of the most problematic examples of them?

Cat: I think they’re easy. People think of tragedy
as the natural state of queer existence I think and don’t bother looking past
that assumption. A lot of that comes from the real stories we hear but also
from other fictional media. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle I think. Queer lives
don’t always end happily, but sometimes they do, and I’d rather focus on that.
I think one of the most galling examples for me was actually one of the
inspirations for Dates. I was binge-watching The Tudors on Netflix and I think in one episode you find out a
character is gay, they show him happy with a new love interest and maybe two
episodes later he’s dead of the plague. There was no point in any of it.

Zora: The first time I can ever remember being confronted
with the tragic queer trope was when I was watching Season 6 of Buffy and Joss Whedon decided to fulfil
his dream of adding a character to the opening credits and immediately killing
them off by destroying the show’s most functional—and, coincidentally, only
queer—couple. I didn’t understand it or, really, why people were so upset at
the time, but now when I think tragic queer it’s the first thing to come
to mind and it’s one of the most egregious and galling examples I can think of.

By Claudia Astorino and Jessica Trevino

Me: The central theme for this volume of Dates
is progress. Why did you pick this theme in particular?

Zora: We picked progress because we wanted to
emphasize growth and innovation. I feel like in the last few years I’ve learned
about a ton of historical figures who were leaders during cultural shifts and
also happened to be queer, or about queer figures who also happened to be great
innovators (Glenn Burke and the high five is my favorite example), so I loved
the idea of infusing queerness into events and periods that people often don’t
associate with it.

Cat: I think it felt fitting too because the whole
point of books like these is to sort of push things in the right direction. We
really want progress so we made a book about it.

By Nicole Fieger

Me: As co-editors on the project, what tasks did you do individually and
collectively to bring the anthology to life?

Zora: Did y’all know that there are like seven
million things to do when creating a book because there really, really are.
There’s not a 100% split on really any tasks—

Cat: I will definitely admit I do not do a lot of
emailing or spreadsheeting.

Zora: Hahahaha, yeah, I’m the one who fields pretty
much all the emails—I have them all go straight to my phone, which, you can
decide how healthy that is—and do the nitty-gritty tracking work on who has
stuff in, who has extensions, all that jazz. Cat is Chief Graphics Maker for
social media and the Kickstarter page, while I tend to be the one to design
stuff like print posters, and I also do all the final book design and layout.
Both of us draft and edit copy (so much copy) on stuff like
announcements, big group info dumps, tumblr posts, etc. We also always look
over folks’ submissions at each stage of the process together, so even though I
wrote all the feedback emails, each and every one of them was our joint
editorial voice.

By Val Wise

Me: How did you get in touch with some of the creators who are working on
this anthology and get them involved with the project?

Cat: The biggest thing for us is the open artist
call. We take online submissions at the start of the project and both times
that’s brought in a lot of amazing talent. But the very first creators to sign
on for the first volume were just friends and former classmates of mine from
SCAD and CMU and they really got the book rolling.

Zora: For the second book, we brought back some folks
from the first volume before open call, since we loved working with them and we
liked the sense of continuity it brought to the books. I also want to give a
special shout out to Erica Chan, cover artist extraordinaire, who’s been with
us literally every step of the way and is one of our biggest cheerleaders (even
though she’s in the book).

Me: Cat, you also worked on one of the stories in the anthology. What can you
tell us about it?

Cat: Sure, it’s called “Reflections of a
Glassmaker” and it takes place in Murano, Italy in the 14th century. Tian, a
Chinese Silk Road merchant, pays the eponymous glassmaker a visit and he brings
him a good deal more to think about than silk. I think it’s a very sweet story
about different forms of dependability. It’s actually a team effort, written by
my good friends Jenna and Jesse Barnes (JJ Barnes for short) and then Effie Lee
provided really lovely inks for my pencils. So there were a lot of cooks in
this kitchen but I think we made a good meal, haha.

Zora: It’s so good, y’all.

Me: What do each of you think is the number one reason backers should pledge
money to this project?

Zora: First and foremost? People should pledge to
support our amazing, amazing group of creators. Every dollar that folks
contribute to the Kickstarter campaign is a dollar towards pay increases for
our contributors, and they deserve every cent. Committing to an anthology that
relies on Kickstarter is an act of trust in the creators—trust that we’ll do
the work to put the book together, organize the campaign, and push it hard so
that the book gets published. That trust—along with the spectacular talent and
skill that all our contributors have brought to bear in their stories—is incredibly
humbling and inspiring.

Realistically,
though, everyone has their own reasons for pledging! If you’re tired of sad
queer stories, if you want a gorgeous book full of stunning artwork, or even if
you want to dip your toe into historical fiction and learn about cultures
including, but for once not limited to, the west, Dates is a great book
and we would love ten or thirty of your dollars.

Cat: Pledge because you can get the book if you do.
It is a good book that will make you feel good even if you cry a bit. I’d think
that’s reason enough even if there wasn’t the rest of it.

Me: What tips can you give to editors interested in working on anthologies or
editing comics in general?

Cat: Do your research. You need to know what you’re
getting into, what your expectations should be, what work is already out there.
Also, for anthologies, the buddy system is great. There’s a reason most of the
anthologies you see are edited by two people––managing 30 creators is a lot of
work. Also be organized?

Zora: Please for the love of god be organized. Lists and spreadsheets
are my guiding light, my savior, my muse. I actually want to echo everything
Cat just said—having a partner on any large scale project is important, but on
anthologies that you’re running as essentially a fourth (in my case) job, it’s
just... such a bad idea to go at it alone. A partner gives you someone to
bounce your ideas off of and holds your hand when sending scary emails, and
having someone there who’s just as in the weeds as you are at 2:30 am the week
before the Kickstarter is a profound source of support.

Research
is also essential. I wasn’t professionally trained in anything to do
with comics or editing until after we started Dates 1, but as
soon as we got semi-serious I sucked in information like a sponge. In June, I
must have read the entirety of the Chainmail Bikini and Beyond
blogs five times (major props to Hazel Newlevant, Taneka Stotts, and Sfé R.
Monster) to understand how they scheduled posting and structured artist calls.
I devoured Spike Trotman’s “Let’s Kickstart a Comic” (a must-read, honestly),
and then between June and August I read every single thing I could find on
timing Kickstarters, setting up pages, funding patterns, communication with
backers… everything.

I could
talk for hours about kickstarting anthologies, so I’m gonna wrap it up, but I
do want to say that if anybody is interested in doing one of these things? Hit
us up. We’re always happy to talk and share anything we know.

Me: Do you have any future plans for making a third volume of Dates? If so,
what details can you provide about that?

Zora: Oh my gosh, we actually have to shut ourselves
down in our chat every time we start talking about new ideas because we keep
having them but really need to keep our heads down and focus on pushing
this book, now, in the present. All I’ll say is that there is definitely more
from Margins in the works, and if/when we do Dates 3 Cat is going to
draw me as a newsie and it is going to be cute as hell.

Cat: I’d say it’s more likely than not because we
cannot stop having ideas for it, but we can’t put any sort of timeline on it
yet. If it happens I’m sure we’ll do another open artist call so that’ll be the
big thing to look out for.

Me: Thank you for your time, Zora and Cat! If you’re reading this
and are interested in backing Dates 2,
check out the
official Kickstarter here.

Do you
have a Kickstarter? Want to be interviewed about it and have the project
featured on "Kickstart the Week?" Let me know in the comments below
or message me on my website.